Derek Worthington’s Disaster Taxa
Michael Cella aka nnirror
Photograph: Lily Turner
Michael Cella (he/they) aka nnirror is an artist and software developer from the Midwest USA. He will improvise a set of abstract electronics with Facet, an open-source live coding environment he has developed, and Max/MSP.
Disaster Taxa is a polytempic suite of 21 miniatures for sextet, combining experimental jazz and free improvisation with multiple independent, simultaneous tempo streams. Live performance is enabled by networked software that serves as an animated 'conductor' for each part. Disaster Taxa was composed by Derek Worthington, and is performed by the new sextet Pulse Width Modulation, featuring Matt Riggen, Aaron Kaufman-Levine, Luc Mosley, Julian Quall, Daniel Thatcher, and Adam Shead.
8:30 nnirror
9:30 Pulse Width Modulation performs Derek Worthington’s Disaster Taxa
$15 / $10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available at the Door
About the Artists
Michael Cella (he/they) is an artist and software developer from the Midwest USA. He develops open-ended tools for generative music and incorporates them into his work, characterized by Igloo Mag as "pushing the limits of complexity" and by Boomkat as having a "sound that attends the finest line between chaos and coherence". He has released albums with labels such as EVEL, 3OP, Active Listeners Club, and Tokinogake.
In evolutionary biology, disaster taxa are species that fill in ecological niches vacated by mass extinctions. The shared heredity of the remaining species is masked by the loss of intermediate forms, the extant organisms spawning new, wildly diverse ecosystems; the spaces left by collapse and failure giving rise to entirely new possibilities.
Disaster Taxa is a polytempic suite of 21 miniatures for sextet, combining experimental jazz and free improvisation with multiple independent, simultaneous tempo streams (ala Conlon Nancarrow). Familiar concepts of pulse and harmony are placed into unexpected relationships with each other, creating music both evocative and alien. Live performance is enabled by networked software that serves as an animated 'conductor' for each part and keeps all the tempo relationships accurate. Disaster Taxa was composed by Derek Worthington, and is performed by the new sextet Pulse Width Modulation, featuring Matt Riggen, Aaron Kaufman-Levine, Luc Mosley, Julian Quall, Daniel Thatcher, and Adam Shead.
Composer/improviser/electronic musician Derek Worthington recently relocated to Chicago from SE Michigan. His mission for the past several years has been incorporating polytempic structures into experimental jazz. Worthington has presented original work around the United States and internationally, in cities including New York, D.C., Rio de Janeiro, Zurich, and Berlin.